Convention ’72: Ready or Not, Here They Come to Miami

AMERICAN political conventions are perhaps democracy’s most spectacular sacrament. H.L. Mencken found them “as fascinating as a revival or hanging,” and they are often a little of both. As sheer theater, they are a special American form, a television marathon, a grandiose town meeting staged by DeMille. Yet for all their exuberant buncombe, their stretches of interminable tedium and their gusts of rhetoric, the conventions have the seriousness and the fascination of great political power in transfer.

Part of their fascination is that each convention achieves a being totally its own, with its particular cast of winners and losers, its unique settings and vocabularies. The Republicans in ’64 (“Extremism in the defense . . .”), the Democrats in ’68 (“The whole world is watching . . .”)—each convention is a special American mirror. So it will be in 1972. In the hot and gaudy placelessness of off-season Miami Beach, the Republicans and the Democrats will broadcast their particular versions of America.

Automation. The Republicans, with the self-confidence of incumbency, a party all but monolithically unified behind Richard Nixon, look forward to an almost automated convention. The G.O.P.’s three days, starting Aug. 21, promise to be a smooth and businesslike affair, with recitals of past achievements, documentaries showing scenes of Peking and Moscow, the First Family waving under the bunting—Pat and Dick and Julie and David and Tricia and Eddie and Mamie Eisenhower—and perhaps some time out for golf. The only real drama should come on the third day, when the President will end months of speculation by answering the vice-presidential question: Will it be Spiro Agnew again? Or former Treasury Secretary John Connally? Or some unsuspected Nixonian surprise?

For the Democrats, the convention that starts next week will be a grand improvisation, one of the most intriguing experiments in the nation’s political history. In their four disconsolate and debt-ridden years since Chicago, the Democrats have reformed themselves into an almost formidably democratic party. Working under radically new rules of reform, the party has opened its delegations to more blacks, more young people, more women and fewer old-line professional politicians than ever before.

One of the aims of party reform was to change the character of the convention itself, to abolish the smoke-filled room and cynically staged yahooery. A certain puritanism lies behind the new rules—all of which must be approved by the delegates. Floor parades with hired bands and conscripted enthusiasts are forbidden. Nominating and seconding speeches for each candidate will be limited to a total of 15 minutes—or so the rules optimistically provide. All but gone will be the endless procession of nominating speeches for favorite sons; now a candidate must prove he has substantial support in at least three states before his name can be put up for nomination. The unit rule, which was voted down at the 1968 convention, is now abolished, ending the 140-year-old practice under which many state delegations voted as a bloc, often under the dictatorship of state bosses. States will vote in an order chosen by lot, not alphabetically.

But the very openness of the convention could make it as fascinatingly confused as any 19th century brawl. Even before it starts, well over 1,000 delegates will have had their credentials challenged. Like masses of cool and hot air colliding in the upper atmosphere, the older party regulars and the new ambassadors of youth, blacks and females will confront one another with sometimes furiously different notions of how to run a convention and, for that matter, a political party. The party platform will be a special battleground, with the black congressional caucus, the National Women’s Political Caucus and other groups demanding a voice. Defense spending, tax reform, amnesty, busing—such issues must be struggled over before the nominee is formally chosen, thus making the construction of the platform a doubly complicated task.

Even if it were run with the decorum of a D.A.R. meeting, the sheer logistics of bringing it all together are incredibly elaborate. Miami Beach, a normally garish but placid corridor of resorts and retirement (the median age of permanent residents is 65), is looking forward to the twin bill with a booster’s pride and a bit of trepidation.

For the Democratic Convention, 5,000 delegates and alternates will descend. That is only the beginning. Some 35,000 others will be there: Democratic politicians and their staffs and families and about 8,000 newsmen. With 29,000 hotel rooms, Miami Beach can accommodate those visitors readily enough. But for months yippies and others have been promising that thousands of demonstrators will be trooping across the causeways onto the island to make themselves heard. The ghost of Chicago hangs in the air like a dark presence, and many of the locals angrily protested accepting the conventions at all. Besides the incoming street people expected, there is anxiety about the local “Gusanos,” the anti-Castro Cubans living in the area.

But the Miami Beach police chief, handsomely named Rocky Pomerance, whose 250-man force will be fortified with reserves of county and state police, along with scores of Secret Service men, FBI agents and Army Intelligence units, promises to keep dissent in reasonably humane control. Flamingo Park, a six-block area near the Miami Beach Convention Hall, has been designated a “free-speech area” for demonstrations. Other protest areas, all bordered by a new $24,000, 6-ft.-high chain-link fence decorated with hibiscus, have been set aside in front of the hall. Youth ombudsmen and housing counselors will be on duty; the Democrats will sponsor a country-and-western music night to siphon off tensions.

Meantime, Pomerance has had his men boning up at Florida International University, studying the philosophy of protest as part of their special training. How many demonstrators will appear remains uncertain, but if violence should erupt, there has been talk that the police have the final tactical advantage of being able simply to block off the island’s five causeways.

The Democrats are spending well over $1.5 million for their convention, while the Republicans will pay almost as much. With a debt of $9.3 million still hanging over the party, the Democrats are determined this time to make the convention pay for itself. The hosts at Miami Beach have put up $900,000 in cash and services for the honor of having the convention; Kentucky Fried Chicken paid $35,000 for the right to distribute boxed dinners at one evening’s session. Among other resources, the Democrats hope to raise $900,000 from sales of their thick, $3.50-per-copy convention program. Says Richard Murphy, who is acting as the Democratic National Committee’s field general for the convention: “We’re the most solvent we’ve ever been.”

Murphy’s job has been herculean: in communications alone, 7,000 telephones running through 40 switchboards have been installed—the most elaborate system any convention has ever had. There are direct-line hookups to every candidate’s hotel headquarters and all the candidates’ special trailers, backed up to the Convention Hall. Each delegation chairman will have a red telephone and microphone connected to the podium; this year there will also be a white telephone mounted on the floor for every 15 delegates, so that every delegate can communicate with all others. For the first time, a closed-circuit television system will carry convention proceedings to virtually every hotel room within 30 miles of the hall. For the press, 1,500 telephone lines and 340 teletypes have been installed in the hall.

For all such elaborate electronics and for all of the Democratic Party reforms, it may be that conventions have not entirely changed from the days when they were first invented by the Anti-Masonic Party in 1831, or from 1912, when Teddy Roosevelt arrived at the G.O.P. Convention noting that it was “not a place for anybody who doesn’t love a fight.” In his Republican keynote address in 1948, Illinois Governor Dwight Green accused the Democrats of having “invited the lunatic fringe to share their feast of power.” Such rhetoric is sure to be in the air over Miami Beach. As Theodore White wrote four years ago: “One comes to any convention with an anticipatory sense of excitement; there is a game to be played, for good or bad.”